Are the Oscars Irrelevant?

The 98th Academy Awards air Sunday. The 2025 ceremony drew 19.69 million viewers — up 1% from 2024, but still 43% below the 34.4 million who watched in 2016. The last time the Oscars drew more than 40 million was 2014; the record was 55 million when Titanic swept in 1998. The Academy has announced it will move the telecast to YouTube starting in 2029, ending a 50-year run on ABC.

1. They're a Relic (Audience Data, Academy Members)

55 million viewers watched Titanic win. This year they'll be lucky to hit 20 million.

The viewership decline is not a blip — it's a trend line. There has been a 41% decrease in viewership since 2017, when 32.9 million people watched. The total audience is 17% behind 2020. Every modest uptick gets celebrated as a comeback; zoom out and the direction is unmistakable.

Academy members have said the quiet part out loud. One member wrote that "the Oscars have become pretty irrelevant," citing the Academy's preference for "Oscar bait" over audience favorites. Critics note that the divide between audience favorite movies and the ones nominated for Academy Awards keeps growing.

The timing undercuts the whole premise. The ceremony happens in March — long after most nominated films have left theaters or moved to streaming. Asking audiences to care about a set of films deep into PVOD in the third month of a new year cuts against every trend in entertainment consumption. By the time the Oscars air, the cultural conversation has moved on.

2. Streaming Killed the Monoculture (Industry Analysts, Prism News)

People don't watch movies the same way anymore. The Oscars haven't caught up.

Streaming has fundamentally changed how movies are financed and seen. Several of the strongest Best Picture contenders were produced or co-financed by streaming platforms — a pattern unthinkable a decade ago. Streaming economics have reshaped theatrical windows and the campaign strategies studios use to win Academy votes. The Oscars were designed for a theatrical-release ecosystem that barely exists anymore.

Cord-cutting has eroded the concentrated audience the Oscars depend on. More viewers have ditched cable in favor of streaming platforms, making a four-hour Sunday night broadcast on network television less central to cultural conversation. The "Oscar bump" for Best Picture winners' box office averaged a 57% increase in ticket sales post-nomination in 2025, down from 102% in the pre-streaming era. Winning an Oscar used to double your box office. Now it barely moves the needle.

Streaming has replaced the theater as the place where nominees find their audience. Nominations correlate with a 68% increase in streams, while wins correlate with a 112% increase. The Oscar still drives viewership — just not in theaters. The real Oscar bump is now a streaming bump, which raises the question of why a ceremony built around theatrical prestige is celebrating films most people will watch on their couch.

3. Stop It, They Still Matter (Academy Leadership, NBC News)

One of the last events that can get people in 225 countries to pay attention to the same thing at the same time.

The Oscars remain one of the last shared cultural moments. The annual broadcast is described as a cultural common denominator — a shared global language that cuts across geography, ideology, and national identity. In an era of algorithmic feeds and fractured attention, that's worth something.

The Academy is leaning into the spectacle. CEO Bill Kramer says the Academy is "leaning into big cultural moments." The 2026 theme centers on "humanity." A new award category — the first in over 20 years — is an attempt to evolve with audience and industry expectations. The move to YouTube in 2029 signals a willingness to go where the audience actually is.

And the Oscars still define careers. An Oscar win carries prestige that shifts a career trajectory. The Academy has also swung back toward crowning commercially successful films — Everything Everywhere All At Once and Oppenheimer both achieved major box office success. This year's frontrunner, Sinners, grossed $369 million worldwide, suggesting the disconnect between Oscar picks and audience favorites may be narrowing.

Where This Lands

The viewership numbers are bad, and the trend is worse — down 43% in a decade, with no sign of reversal. Streaming has reshaped the industry the Oscars were built to celebrate, and the ceremony's March timing puts it months after anyone is thinking about last year's movies. On the other hand, the Oscars remain one of the only cultural events that can command attention in 225 countries simultaneously, and the Academy knows it needs to adapt. Where this lands depends on whether the adaptations are fast enough to matter, or whether a ceremony designed for the monoculture can survive in a world that doesn't have one anymore.